Google is currently in a dispute with French media, who are trying to force Google to pay them a portion of its advertising revenues for using their content in search results.

Google chief Eric Schmidt met with French President François Hollande on Monday to discuss the matter. Hollande had warned that Google must negotiate with the press or face new legislation, and Google has said that it would exclude French media from search results if France adopts new laws forcing them to pay for content.

Hollande is one of the few political figures worldwide who has had the courage to stand up to Google’s monopolistic bullying tactics.

I’ve never been a supporter of forcing search engines to pay for search result content because it opens up a whole hornets nest of fair-use quotation issues that are not in the interest of free and open discussion. It also means that nobody but the giants will be able to run a search engine, which could potentially wipe out other very useful search tools.

But Google’s monopoly has been unchecked (nay, abetted) by government interests for so long that there may be no other way to stop the destructive impact they are having on journalism worldwide. I know I’ve put this chart up before, but its importance cannot be overstated:

Google is cannibalizing its massive revenues from media outlets all over the world. Their ability to buy off US politicians has largely bought them a pass with US regulators, so they have been able to keep something like this from happening domestically. But with the EU data protection authorities essentially declaring that Google’s business model is illegal, and Hollande now breaking out the Louisville slugger, it could set a worldwide precedent. Media powerhouses like Rupert Murdoch and the AP are already clamoring for Google to pay them for their content.

It’s safe to say that Google will fight this with everything it has, and that Eric Schmidt is probably having a very bad day.

Photo of François Hollande by A. Bouirabdane. Photo of Eric Schmidt by jdlasica. Both under Creative Commons license.

It’s kind of sad that EU government entities have to take on the task of sane regulation of US-chartered corporations, because the US government is so wholly corrupt and owned by corporations that it cannot do this itself.

What happens to the value of Google as a search engine (and to advertisers) if it keeps doing what it promised, back in its “Don’t Be Evil” days, and increasingly censors and constrains its search results?

So many people are still thinking of Google as this plucky little startup that does cute doodles, touts true high-speed internet, and runs green facilities. They don’t see things like Google’s censoring of search results, a policy that dates to its long-standing agreement with the Chinese government on the subject.

The Internet is essentially anarchistic (or happily ‘neutral’). Firedoglake seems to be a free members-only club that permits and welcomes guests, who can be excluded. Google’s search engine part of Google’s empire acts like socialism but actually depends on competition and landed hits. France is chauvinistic, which characteristic will always dominate as long as English serves as the global and scientific lingua franca.

Maybe someday a very superior search engine will be funded by a compulsory fee charged to ISPs and all other telecom companies.

How would Google back down now? What would they offer to do if they want to avoid this going forward?

Hmmm. In these situations I always put on my Rahm hat, which is to ask oneself, “how could I be the biggest asshole possible?” (Don’t knock it, it is a remarkably good predictor of what will happen in most cases).

If I was Eric Schmidt I’d go to my good friends in the White House and I’d find something France wants from them, and I’d find a way to have them fuck it up for the French if they don’t back down.

Likewise if I was Hollande, I’d go to Rupert Murdoch and say “good buddy, we’ve got almost nothing in common, but we’d love some support on this.” And I’d see if I couldn’t get Murdoch bashing the unholy Google-government alliance and goading the FTC into pursuing a case against Google so they’d have too much on their hands to want to take on this fight.

I’d say that gives Hollande the advantage in terms of arsenal, because the White House thing is a pretty difficult bank shot given the time frame, and Murdoch is chomping at the bit. But Google has so much money and so much on the line they will not back down. So it’ll wind up a slug-fest either way.

I should say I’ve been waiting for this for a while: the close alliance between EU papers and EU politicians was likely to fuel a Google rebellion sooner or later. They just haven’t spread the kind of money over there that they have domestically, and have calculated that they could use both their corporate might and their influence over the US government to bully everyone else into submission. Which is not a bad bet, in an evil Machiavellian kind of way. But there may be some serious speed bumps for them.

Maybe Schmidt has the skill to negotiate this, but so far as we’re witnessing the ham-fisted threats against an opponent they have little influence over, I’m not seeing evidence of that. They signed an agreement with AP that shut them up, but now that everyone is all-in on this fight, it’s going to make it difficult to find a quiet resolution. And if France gets what it’s asking for, the other EU countries will not be far behind

Every progressive ounce we can squeegee out of the faux-socialiste Hollande is a plus. Even the holograph of an alternative to corporate domination is desperately needed in all quarters! Maybe Frenchgov goes all Sputnik and comes up with an alternative to google for us? Enlists the likes of the people who brought us Ubuntu?

I’m not savy on these things so just a question here. What happens if everyone goes after Google for money? Will google start charging to use their search engine and e mail? I ask bc Google is not likely to just pay it out of the goodness of their hearts, if they even have one.

I suppose they could charge sponsored links? See I’m not even sure how they make their billions.

I must say you and your Rahm hat put Machiavelli to shame. I shall resolve to never play chess with you. It is your last sentence that makes me think Google might fold like a cheap paper bag when they run the numbers and if they do it would require some kind of monetary agreement. France already has a rep as not being in lock step with USA and wouldn’t the Euro gain strength with a new revenue stream?

With the eradication of meaningful investigative journalism, it appears that news organizations now use punditry and gossip columns to fill in the gap. Google is perhaps partially responsible for this shift, but I doubt that a redress in the distribution of profit, with regard to the emerging conventions of the information age, will foster a new age of investigative journalism. Nope, I’m afraid that funds for serious investigative journalism threaten too many global power structures to ever again be allocated to the journalism profession– even if investigative journalism is popular or profitable. I’m afraid it’s the Nightly Business Report’s drone of various production numbers that will characterize the media landscape from here on out, well, at least until environmental collapse shakes things up and somebody decides that cause and effect is interesting again. Ho hum. It never ceases to amaze me that the American mainstream press has essentially become the spiritual successor to the Pravda/Izvestia media model of the 1980′s Soviet Union.

French extortion to cover up their own failings is what this is. Google has made huge investments to create the successful search service that they run.

At any time the French newspapers, or any newspaper, in fact any website could have denied Google (or any other search engine) access to their news/content simply by editing their Robots.Txt file to exclude themselves from being searched.

They preferred to be lazy and let Google do the hard work while they sat back and enjoyed the pass through visitors provided by a world wide visibility that they had not previously enjoyed.

However, they can still remedy this. If their content is so valuable all they have to do is edit the Robots.Txt file, exclude Google and either arrange for revenue sharing with some other search service or create their own search service. UPI and AP should have done this long, long ago.

The French with their fetish for culture integrity and their technology leading (when it was introduced) mini-tel service certainly could have foreseen the need to have their own search service.